46 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



here to closing land because the custom of sharing all the 

 minor products is bo nearly universal. 



But it may be said that closing the laud is not neces- 

 sary; that some of the best preserves require scarcely 

 more than respect for the State game laws. These favors 

 are appreciated, and yet so captious is the public at pres- 

 ent that even this would fail to disarm suspicion on 

 Penobscot. "The whole thing was free to them before, 

 without costing. They didn't need only enough for their 

 shanty. When they get good and ready they mean to 

 •hut down on us." The presence of private wardens to 

 enforce State laws would be taken as an affront. In- 

 deed (to show the feeling), the private rewards offered 

 last winter by non-residents, whatever might have been 

 their effect in the western part of the State, were bitterly 

 resented here as unwarrantable interference. 



The amount of it is that our landowners and lumber- 

 men are wholly trusted. They are the most popular class 

 of employers in the State. They wear the homespun in 

 •peech and manners and have immense personal popular- 

 ity. Some of them merely on the strength of this popu- 

 larity could muster a regiment to work for them or to 

 fight for them. The land they own cannot be transferred 

 in any quantities from their hands to strangers, without 

 creating the feeling that it bas gone from the control of 

 friends to that of aliens, who may be never so worthy but 

 are not the same. It is like seeing the old homestead 

 change hands, 



"Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces; 

 Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child." 



That is the feeling we have; and no game preserve can 

 be purchased here for some years at least without buying 

 with it also a sub-acute hostility — home no longer being 

 home, happy for the child. 



Nor is this the sole cause of prejudice. The owner of a 

 preserve may be the pattern of all moral excellence, but 

 to those used to different customs he seems a dog in the 

 manger, guarding what he cannot use and thinking to 

 growl away those who have at least as good a right there 

 as he. This antagonizes the woodsman at two points. 

 He wiU not take a dare and he hates selfishness. A body 

 of gamekeepers signifies defiance; the effort to hold wild 

 game on wild land is (to him) a meanness almost incom- 

 prehensible. Now the punishment of some sins is re- 

 ■erved for God alone, but (according to the Maine dictum) 

 •tinginess may be punished by God and the neighbors. 

 There is not the slightest doubt that the establishment of 

 preserves, or even the purchasing of land for them at the 

 present time, would result in burning the country. 



How to express the certainty of this I do not know, 

 nor that stern approval which it would meet from a large 

 following; but I know only too well the kind of resolu- 

 tion which blows up the magazine and garrison (not 

 always by their leave) to avoid surrender to the enemy. 

 If any one doubts the outcome of preserves here let him 

 ask the larger lumbermen and landowners and the best 

 guides. What a hundred years will bring forth none 

 can tell; whether ten years will produce a change of 

 feeling these men would know better than I, but I in- 

 cline to think that ten years will not do it. Changes 

 occur slowly here, and as 1 showed in the beginning, the 

 love of freedom so outweighs the love of money with 

 woodsmen that it seems not improbable that the oppo- 

 •ition to preserves will strengthen as the demand for 

 them increases. 



We need not dwell upon the value of the lumbering 

 interests to Maine, especially to the working classes who 

 find employment by the thousand in the lumber camps, 

 on the drives, in sawmills, in pulpmills, loading vessels 

 and making them. Except farming no one occupation 

 employs so many men as lumbering and its dependent 

 trades. The people are dependent upon it, and those who 

 try to teach us that the game and fish ai'e worth more 

 than all the lumber get laughed at for their pains. Then, 

 again, the water powers are directly dependent upon the 

 forests. This is especially true of the Penobscot, which 

 rises in swamps and bays and little streamlets. Destroy 

 the forests and the water powers are gone. And after 

 the forests are gone come the floods and freshets. It is 

 irnperative that the forests should be saved from fire. 



But could game preserves do this damage? Probably 

 not. The opportunity will not be given. The chances 

 are that the first preserve on Penobscot waters will be 

 burned at once— there is an old saw about fighting fire 

 with fire — and heavier conflagrations saved in later years 

 when the system should gather force. For it would tend 

 to heavier penalties; they would produce crime and the 

 fires would follow. If the means of prevention cannot 

 be commended, it must be admitted that is one of the 

 ways in which the many instinctively protect themselves 

 when their well being is imperilled for the pleasure of 

 the few. 



The second danger is to fish and game. I said that 

 last summer's waste was responsible for last winter's 

 killing. This was the beginning of retaliatory measures 

 which will be kept up. "It isn't fair that they shoxild 

 have and waste what we can't have to eat," is the com- 



{)laint. The fate of the game in this State depends very 

 argely upon the good will of the rural classes. Sportsmen 

 may be able, as has been boasted, to pass any reasonable 

 laws here, but the veto power lies with the people, and 

 unacceptable game laws will be destructive to the game. 

 This is something worth remembering. People will, not 

 stand to-day what they would a few years ago, and sus- 

 picion which was formerly quiescent is now fully alert. 

 The question is considered not one of game and who 

 shall nave it, but one of rights. The determination is to 

 insist on fair play, to refuse to sell a birthright for any 

 amount of pottage. Hence, any law that, for instance, 

 cuts off December from the open season to open Septem- 

 ber is regarded with extreme disfavor. There is little 

 likelihood that we shall have game dinners of the same 

 order as the Boston tea party, for people are opposed to 

 waste; but any attempt to introduce hunting licenses, for 

 example, or leases of lands and waters, or to favor sports- 

 men more than residents would destroy the major part of 

 the game in a very few years. There is, indeed, little dan- 

 ger of this being done with game, but at any time pickerel 

 may be put into trout waters. The sporting papers have 

 had a great deal to say about the destructiveness of win- 

 ter trout fishing, but they do not know that this is all 

 that secures any trout fishing. The people here will have 

 some kind of winter fishing, and if isn't trout it shall be 

 pickerel. It is (rue that there is a strict law against the 

 introduction of pickerel, but there is absolutely no means 

 of enforcing it. I suppose that it is generally known that 

 Br pickerel may be frozen stiff, kept so for days and after- 



ward resuscitated. The experiment is simple enough, 

 for it only needs that the fish should be caught on a very 

 cold day, frozen immediately and packed in snow, after- 

 ward thawed slowly in cold water. Any one who tries 

 it, as I have done, wiU be satisfied that pickerel could be 

 transported in this way anywhere and that no law could 

 be framed to prevent tbear introduction into the best 

 trout waters. This is an absolute check to all attempts 

 to take away the winter trout fishing. Had it been ray 

 purpose to deal with fish laws I could have made it plain 

 that once already this danger was pressing and was 

 avoided by the "one line for citizens" law, which no one 

 ever kept. The change this winter permitting five set 

 lines (this is practically an unlimited number, the real 

 limit to the fishing being the law forbidding transporta- 

 tion of above a certain amount of fish)— this change was 

 a wise and pacifie measure, which removes to some ex- 

 tent the danger to trout waters. 



We come at length to the question of adding imprison- 

 ment to penalties. May the day of it long be averted! I 

 know that some of our people, seeing the inequality of 

 the money penalty, have advised it, but without due fore- 

 thought. Of all bad things that can happen to us through 

 the wretched possession of a little game, this would be the 

 worst. "It would fill these woods full of outlaws," said 

 one guide in gloomy anticipation. To add imprisonment 

 to all our game-law penalties, as our Commissioners have 

 urged, as others will be sure to urge in coming time, 

 would be to put a premium on crime. 



In the first place, the majority of all our game-law 

 violations are committed by people called "sportsmen." 

 This a safe estimate for game-law violators; the guides 

 will put it higher. Now, none of these men, if they have 

 any ready money, need ever suffer imprisonment unless 

 their sense of honor be fantastically nice. To give an ex- 

 treme instance, let us suppose that the recommendation 

 of the Commissioners' Report in 1886 had actually become 

 law, and that "a penalty of Ij^oOO and six months' im- 

 prisonment [was] the mildest jjunishment for killing a 

 cow moose at any season." This would not save the cow 

 moose. They would still be killed unintentionally, for 

 half the time at least it is impossible to tell the sex of the 

 animal shot before the chance is gone; and they would be 

 killed intentionally also to spite the law. But with such 

 a law, unworthy officers and justices would procure ap- 

 pointments and connive together (as has actually been 

 done) to make the most they could out of offenses, real or 

 trumped up. Certain justices would have the majority 

 of the cases and have- their price. But, supposing the 

 case a good one, who would not pay $500, or even twice 

 that, if a busy man, in order to escape six months in the 

 county jail? As a matter of fact it would not cost so much. 

 Rather than have the case appealed they would come 

 down some on their prices. The poor man, who would be 

 some farmer, trapper or hunter, and who could not pay 

 their price, must appeal. Now, in the higher courts both 

 men would stand alike, or, indeed, the poor man would 

 have the better chance; for a jury would not convict on 

 any such case if there was any possible escape. But, as a 

 matter of fact, not very many cases would go up to 

 superior courts. Both would take their chances of being 

 found out; the wealthier man would know his grounds 

 and perhaps make it all right beforehand, while the poorer 

 man if caught in the act would settle it on the spot or as 

 soon thereafter as possible. That law. had it been made 

 law, would have put a premium on murder. The suggestion 

 was well intended, bub it was not wise. It is to the credit 

 of the Commissioners' judgment that they ceased to lu'ge 

 this, and have of late not proposed the addition of im- 

 prisonment. But the suggestion has been made and it 

 cannot be forgotten. We fear that it would almost 

 incAdtably follow the establishment of an extensive system 

 of private preserves. "It would be like it is in England," 

 writes one hunter. 



No better illustration of the iniquities of preserving the 

 pleasure of the few by arbitrary enactments against the 

 rights of the many can be given than in quoting what 

 Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist, wrote nearly fifty 

 years ago concerning the English system and its results. 

 The extract is from his "Crime Making Laws," in Essays 

 Political and Social; but others of his papers are equally 

 profitable and equally apt. There is in these papers the 

 weight of righteousness nobly indignant and the weight 

 of experience which overbears all theories and theoret- 

 ical objections: 



"If there was a special law enacted against all red- 

 haired men and all men six foot high, red-haired men 

 and men six foot high would in a short time become ex- 

 ceedingly dangerous characters. In order to render 

 them greatly worse than their neighbors, there would be 

 nothing more necessary than simply to set them beyond 

 the pale of the constitution by providing by statute that 

 whoever lodged informations against red-haired men or 

 men six feet high should be handsomely rewarded, and 

 that the culprits themselves should be lodged in prison 

 and kept at hard labor on every conviction from a fort- 

 night to sixty days. The country would at length come 

 to groan under the untolerable burden of its red-haired 

 men and its men six feet high. There would be frequent 

 paragraphs in our columns and elsewhere to the effect 

 that some three or four respectable white-haired gentle- 

 men, varying in height from five feet nothing to five feet 

 five, had Ijeen grievously maltreated in laudably attempt- 

 ing to apprehend some formidable felon, habit and re- 

 pute six feet high; or to the effect that Constable D., of 

 the third division, had been barbarously mm-dered by a 

 red-haired ruffian. Philosophers would come to discover 

 that so deeply implanted was the bias to outrage and 

 wrong in red-haired nature that it held by the scoundrels 

 even after their heads had become bald and their whisk- 

 ers gray; and so inherent was rufiianism to six-feet-high 

 men that though four six feet fellows had for the sake of 

 example, been cut short at the knees, they had remained, 

 notwithstanding the mutilation, as incorrigible ruffians 

 as ever. From time to time there would be some terrible 

 tragedy enacted by some tremendous incarnation of il- 

 legality and evil, who was both red-haired and six feet 

 high to boot." 



With exquisite humor. Miller traces the gradual aboli- 

 tion of the enactments. He also draws a vivid picture of 

 tbe former prevalence of highway robbery and murder 

 in England. He continues; 



"And so highway murder has become one of almost 

 the rarest offenses m the criminal register of the country. 

 Very different is the case, however, with murders of an- 

 other kind. * * * Within the last few years there 

 hare been no fewer than twenty-five game keepers mur- 



dered in England, The cases were all ascertained cases: 

 coroners' juries sat upon the bodies, and verdicts of wilful 

 murder were returned against certain parties, known or 

 unknown; and these were, of course, but the murders oq 

 the one side. * * * 



"Be it remembered, too, that the peculiar barbarism of 

 the modern period is greatly more a national reproach 

 than that of the ancient. The old enormities were enor- 

 mities in spite of a good law; the newer enormities are 

 enormities that arise directly out of a bad one. There is 

 sound sense as well as good feeling in the remark of Mrs. 

 Saddletree on the law, in Effie Dsan's case, as laid down 

 by her learned husband the saddler. 'The crime,' re- 

 marked the wiseacre to his better half, 'is rather a favorite 

 of the law, this species of murder being one of its own 

 creating.' 'Then, if the law makes murders,' replied the 

 matron, 'the law should be hanged for them; or if they 

 would hang up a lawyer instead , the country would find 

 nae faut.' All the twenty-five ascertained murders 

 to which we have referred, and the at least equally great 

 number of concealed ones, were crimes of the law's mak- 

 ing, murders which as certainly originated in the law, 

 and which, if the law did not exist, would as certainly 

 not have been, as the supposed crimes of our illustration 

 under the anti-red-hair, anti six-foot-high statutes. No 

 murders arise out of the killing of seals and sea gulls; 

 why should any murders arise out of the killmg of hares 

 and pheasants? Simply because there is a pabulum of 

 law in the one case, out of which the transgression 

 springs, and no producing pabulum of law in the other. 

 There can be nothing more perilous to the mor- 

 als of the people than stringent laws — that is, instead of 

 attaching their penalties to actual crime, and having, in 

 consequence, like the laws against the housebreaker and 

 the highwayman, the whole weight of the ]jopular con- 

 science on their side, ei^eate the crime u-Mch they jmnish, 

 and have thus the moral sense of the counti-y certainly not 

 for, mayhap against them. They become invariably in 

 all such cases a sort of machinery for converting useful 

 subjects and honest men into rogues and public pests. 

 Lacking the moral sanction, their penalties are neither 

 more nor less than a certain amount of peril, which bold 

 spirits do not hesitate to encounter, just as a keen sports- 

 man does not hesitate to encounter the modicum of risk 

 which he runs from the gun that he carries, * * * 

 And such is the principle, when the law, equally dissoci- 

 ated from the promptings of the moral sense, is not a law 

 of accident, but of the statute book. Men brave the dan- 

 ger of the penalty, as they do the peril of the fowling 

 piece. But there is this ultimate difference, without 

 being in any degree a felon by his own conscience, the 

 traverser of the statutory enactment becomes legally a 

 felon; he may be dealt with, like the red-haired or six- 

 feet-high felon of OUT illustration, as decidedly criminal. 

 * * * Few of our readers can have any adequate con- 

 ception of the immense mass of criminality created yearly 

 in the empire by this singularly deteriorating process. 

 In the year 1843 there were in England and Wales alone 

 no fewer than 4,5.89 convictions under the game laws. 

 Forty of that number were deemed cases of so serious a 

 nature that the culprits were transported. In all the 

 other cases they were either fined or imprisoned; tbe fines 

 taken in the aggregate averaging two pounds sterling, the 

 imprisonments seven weeks. And it is out of this system 

 of formidable penalties that the numerous murders have 

 arisen, and that the game laws of the country have, like 

 tho^e of Draco, come to be written in blood." 



The future of the game and fish of Maine, the pleasure 

 of sportsmen, the property of residents, the safety of 

 some, the morals of many, are jeopardized by the feeble 

 and unequal enforcement of the game laws of which we 

 have been conscious for three years, which has in reality 

 existed much longer. We need a prompt reform in the 

 equitable enforcement of those laws (which are good) by 

 competent and incorruptible officers. We need efforts to 

 prevent infractions 6f the law as well as to punish them. 

 We need the cooperation of residents and sportsmen. To 

 secure this on the part of the rural population, the move- 

 ment toward reform must be begun in the summer 

 months — in July^ instead of January; otherwise they will 

 not believe in its honesty; we have always had some- 

 thing done in the winter, because "it costs less." When 

 they can feel confidence in the officials and their justice, 

 the inhabitants will take an interest and a pride in their 

 work, and local matters will right themselves, and the 

 better class of sportsmen by extending their influence, as 

 they can do, will accomplish more than we can to restrain 

 and discountenance the misdoings of those who have 

 brought disgrace upon the name. 



Fannie Pearson Habdy, 



THE NEW YORK WOODCOCK SEASON. 



THE woodcock season in New York State wiU not open 

 until Sept. 1, From the Book of the Game Laws we 

 quote the full text of Sees. 9 and 10, Chap. 534, Laws 

 1879, as amended. Sec, 10 originally had no reference to 

 woodcock, but when it was amended last year the word 

 "woodcock" was surreptitiously interjected into the bill, 

 presumably by some one more solicitous to do away with 

 August woodcock shooting than to secure its abolition if 

 at all by fair means. Here is the law: 



Woodcock., SQUiiiRKii.— Sec. 9 [as amended by Chap. 389, Laws 

 1884]. No person shall kill or expose for sale, or have in his or her 

 possesBion after the same has been killed, any woodcock, between 

 the first day of .January and the iirst day of yeptembpr, in the 

 counties of Oneida and Delaware, and in other parts of the State, 

 between the first day of January and the first day of Aagust in 

 each year, except as hereinafter provided. It shall not be lawful 

 for any person to kill or expose for sale, or to have in his or her 

 possession after the same has been killed, any black or gray squir- 

 rel, between the first day of February and the first day of Aueust in 

 each year. Any person violating either of the provisions of this 

 section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and in addition 

 thereto shall be liable to a penalty of twenty-five doUai-s for each 

 bird or animal so killed or had in possession, [See Sec. 10.] 



Ruffed Grouse, Partridge, Pinnated Ghoxtse, hrauue 

 Chicken, Woodcock.— Sec. 10 [as amended by Chap. 90. Laws 

 1890].— No person shall kill, or expose for sale, or have in his or 

 her possession, after the same bas been killed, any ruffed grouse, 

 commonly called partridge, < r pinnated grouse, commnnlv called 

 prairie chicken, or woodcock, between the first day of January 

 and the first day of September, except as heriuafter provided. 

 No person, carrier, corporation, association or compan y shall, at 

 any time, carry or transport or have in his or its possession for 

 the purpose of transportation, any ruHed grouse, commonly called 

 partrirlee, or pinnated grouse, commonly called prairie chicken, 

 or woodcock, caught or killed in that portion of this Slate consti- 

 tuting the forest preserve, [<■] and any person, carrier, corpora- 

 tion, ai^ociatioa or company, which has In his or its possession 

 any ruffpd grouse, commonly called partridge, nr pinnated grouse, 

 commonly called prairie chloken. or woodcock, causht or kiiled 

 Id the couutle* included in the forest preserve, shall be doem^d to 

 have them in his or its possession in violannn of this section; 

 provided, however, that they may traneport from the forest pre- 

 serve or have In possession for the purpose of transportation the 



